Cutting Room for February 16

I don’t know a word in French that wasn’t in “Lady Marmalade,” so someone needs to tell me if “Le Figaro” translates to “Liars with Pants of Fire.” Why? Well, a French newspaper with that name is reporting that Marion Cotillard was just cast in The Dark Knight Rises. If the French aren’t lying to me again, I’m ecstatic. My only regret is that Anne Hathaway beat her to Catwoman’s spandex.

The best part about watching The Room is knowing you’ll never watch a movie that bad ever again. The so-wretched-it’s-awesome cult classic has played the midnight run at our own Dundee Theater (dundeetheatre.com) specifically because it is so beyond reason in its awfulness. Yet a man named Sandy Schklair, whose IMDB resume need not have the stain of The Room on it, is fighting to put that hyperlink on his bio. Basically, Entertainment Weekly is reporting that writer/producer/star/probable-maniac Tommy Wiseau may not have directed the infamous train wreck, having hired Schklair to do the dirty deed. A battle is brewing over ownership of The Room. The only comparison would be if two dudes in an elevator both tried to claim they were the fart maker.

Park Chan-wook, director of Oldboy and Thirst, is set to make his English-language film debut with Stoker, which will star Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth. They’re probably excited to be in the genius director’s new film, but if they’ve seen any of his other movies, I’m guessing their excitement will be tempered by the time they finish reading the script and they find out what horrible, horrible things they’ll be doing to one another.

Cutting Room provides breaking local and national movie news … complete with added sarcasm. Send any relevant information to {encode="film@thereader.com" title="film@thereader.com"}. Check out Ryan on the radio on CD 105.9 (Fridays at around 7:30 a.m.), on his blog at thereader.com/film/C19 and on Twitter (twitter.com/thereaderfilm).